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Psycho – Cold Shower

I’m 34 years younger than Hitchcock world-widely known Psycho, and I am able to affirm: it is a timeless movie.

I watched the first season of Bates Motel, I found the concept interesting as long as in the movie, the relationship mother/son isn’t very explained, or at least, lets us imagine their past.
Norman Bates (the crazy but looking innocent Anthony Perkins) is an impulsive young boy who’s been traumatized, as the movie suggests, by an oppressive mother.
When he’s attracted by a girl, his mother keeps saying, in echo, in his head that he’s being acting filthily and that he’s being manipulated by whores.

In the movie, Janet Leigh is the one interpreting this girl. She’s Marion Crane, a simple secretary, who’s given one day $40,000 to put into the bank. She was having trouble gathering the money needed to live with her lover, Sam Loomis (the gorgeous John Gavin, and after a few hesitations. she finally steals the money and runaway to find Sam.

The problem is, Marion used to be, all her life, a honest girl, and she doesn’t know how to lie. Therefore, she’s quickly suspected of some crime by every person she mets. And a big investigation is then started.

One night, she arrives, by mistake, to the Bates Motel which hasn’t got much clients for a while now, because of the road.
Marion and Norman meets, he finds her pretty, but his mother doesn’t, obviously, and doesn’t mind saying it at loud. Thus, the minute the girl he’s fond of, has done a little mistake, that is to say, gently pushed him away, Norman turned mad and here comes the most cult scene of all time: The Shower.

The fear experienced while watching this scene can’t be denied; killing the character, which seemed this whole time to be the main one, is a master trick and a very bold one. From now on, it is all about suspense and mystery that are floating around creepy Bates and this hidden mother of his.

The genius of Hitchcock couldn’t go further. The story was well written, well sewed and perfectly filmed, with always this natural but excessive curiosity painted by the filmmaker and the voyeurism, we, humans are victims of.

This whole film is about “who is in there”, “what is this person doing?”, “what occurred there?”, everything is about seeing with our own eyes what happened and where to who.

I know, Psycho will remain the movie every parents will want to show to their kids once old enough. And I know it will continue to flabbergast every spectator at some point during the movie.